Search Results

"Why Natalie Portman was wrong about accepting a prize in Israel." That was the title of an article I was writing when the news started coming in. Ten Israeli high school students in their senior year were either missing or in critical condition after being caught in a flash flood roaring down a Negev Wadi. The whole country was fearful and spellbound. The previous day every radio and TV station had been warning not to hike in that area because torrential rains could trigger dangerous flash floods in the narrow gullies.

It is not just America's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, important as that may be. And what is more natural and just than recognizing the 'City of David' which was founded over three thousand years ago, long before Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, or even Ottawa existed? Its very name, Jerusalem, is derived from the Hebrew language and spoken by Israelis today.

The fact is that President Trump's historic decision has bankrupt the long-standing policy of the Palestinian 'peace camp'. And this is why: the Palestinians have long been divided, since the Arabs lost their 1967 war against Israel, on how to force Israel back to the old 'Green' cease-fire line of 1967 without recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Iranian nuclear scientists have visited North Korea in the past, so they may have also been invited to the latest nuclear bomb test. So North Korea, one crazy state, has supplied nuclear weapons aid to another one, Iran. And note this troubling aspect about the North Korean statement:

'The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) To produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher striking power... This has definitely put us (North Korea) on a higher level for mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles'.

For Israel, does this raise the possibility of North Korea selling nuclear bombs to Iran in the future? A flush Iran will now have the cash. This is something that Israel must take into account although the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Tehran is abiding by the nuclear deal forged in July 2015.

So what if an Egyptian judoka refused to shake hands after an Israeli defeated him? It was not the first time. In Rio, even Lebanese Olympians refused to travel in the same bus with Israelis. However it came in stark contrast to the under-current of relations that are slowly gaining momentum between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. Egypt's President Al-Sisi has forged a military understanding with Prime Minister Netanyahu on coping with the mounting mutual threat from Islamic State fighters in Sinai. (The Egyptian Sinai was demilitarized in the peace treaty with Israel). But much of the 'Arab street' in Egypt still views the Jewish state as an enemy. Most certainly, members of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. It was not clear whether the Egyptian Judoka was a fanatical Muslim, probably not. Otherwise he would have refused to compete with a Jew. More likely the Egyptian was worried about the hot reception he would get back home, if he were filmed shaking the hand of an Israeli.

The delivery of the first two F-35 stealth fighters to Israel this week marks the close of Act II in President Barack Obama's Middle East policy. Act I was based on Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. It removed the only thing that could have fouled up his decision to cut America's losses and get out of the Middle East. Failure to find a diplomatic solution to suspending Iran's nuclear weapons program could have triggered an Israeli preventative strike that would have drawn in the US militarily. From Obama's point of view, this was and is a deliberate and rational policy. The fireworks with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu were simply an inevitable result - collateral damage, it wasn't all personal, 'it was business'. Even Ben Rhodes, apparently in a lapse of megalomania, bragged how he and his buddies had pulled the strings of the American media like puppets.

The Tel Aviv bloodbath made the blood boil. Around nine-o'clock in the evening two young Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank, dressed in smart suits and ties and toting hand-bags, walked into a crowded restaurant in the 'Sarona Market' in the heart of Tel Aviv. They quietly took a table and ordered dessert from the waiter. After they were served they opened their handbags and took out two sub-machine guns and started spraying everyone in site. Pandemonium. At this time of the evening, families and friends were relaxing in the new and popular resort site, actually just several hundred yards from the IDF headquarters. With the bullets flying, the patrons dashed for the doors. The terrorists murdered four people sitting nearby and wounded six others. Miraculously, one young man who was shot in the head at nearly point-blank range and survived! One of the sub-machine guns jammed; otherwise more people would have been murdered.

A ceasefire to halt the carnage in a bloody civil war should be a welcome event. But this is not likely in Syria. Two of the most vicious combatants, Daesh and Jabhat al Nusra (an affiliate of al Qaeda) are not even party to it, and Russia has forewarned that it will react with force to any violations by the rebels who seek to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. And after President Putin sent in his airborne 'cavalry' to save Assad by bombing just about anything that moved, the Syrian tyrant is firmly in place in his presidential palace in Damascus.

From a mountaintop in nearby Cyprus, American and British cyber spies have been hacking into Israel's most closely guarded secrets for years. In a startling expose, the Intercept website has revealed a joint American-British operation 'to steal a bird's-eye-view' of Israeli drone operations. Not only that, they are also monitoring any Israeli preparations for a military strike against Iran's nuclear sites. This is how Intercept described what one Israeli has deemed as the gravest penetration of Israel's 'holiest of holies':

"American and British Intelligence secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world."

Jerusalem and Ankara are reportedly on their way to signing a 'memorandum of understanding’ at secret talks held in Switzerland. If so, it could not have come at a better time. In the midst of the EU's branding of Israeli products from West Bank settlements and the BDS campaign being mounted against the Jewish state, Israel will have scored a major strategic coup with Turkey. However, government sources in Jerusalem caution that 'it's not over until it's over’ and Erdogan is known to be very unpredictable. Just ask Russia's President Putin. But if two of the strongest states in the region are about to bury the hatchet, it is unlikely they will restore their former alliance that was the most powerful in the Middle East.

When Barack Obama and Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin, lit Chanukah candles in the Oval Office, they also cast some light on the truth about the U.S. -Israeli relationship. In the past, much was made about the 'bad blood' between Obama and Netanyahu - Barack Hussein Obama was a closet anti-Semite, although most of his closest friends and advisers were Jewish. On the other hand, a close aide to Obama even accused Bibi of coming close to using the N-word! The Obama-Rivlin meeting has gutted these assumptions. At the same time, it has revealed some underling truths about the Obama-Netanyahu feud over the last nearly seven years. Obama and Bibi simply had different perceptions of what policies they wanted to follow after identifying what their voters would support. Naturally, they were democratically elected.

Next Monday, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute will hold an event about the Holocaust and the Nakba based on a book titled "The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity, and Jewish-Arab Partnership." I received a lot of angry messages from Holocaust survivors. Where, one of them asks, did they get the nerve to draw a link between the Holocaust and the Nakba? The institute claims they don't mean to draw a comparison, I tried to explain to him. What they mean is that among both nations, these are seminal events that affected their respective identities. The book has articles, I added, that actually emphasize the difference. He wasn't convinced. Truthfully, neither was I.

If it seemed for a moment that the battle against the BDS campaign is lost, now’s the time to look again. Signs of new thought processes are popping up in Europe, of all places. First, attempts to sabotage the “Tel Aviv beach” on the banks of the river Seine in Paris failed miserably. Those opposed to it managed to generate a lot of noise on social media, but many, many more people came to celebrate at the beach rather than protest against it.

Faith in 'the process' is at an all time low. Even the eternally out-of-touch Obama administration has taken off the rose colored glasses and admitted it is unlikely that Israel and the Palestinians will reach a peace agreement in the coming year due to the various political challenges facing them. Indeed, yet another contrived round of bilateral negotiations between the newly formed right-wing Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (that has historically shown no desire to agree to even the most generous of Israeli concessions) would likely be doomed to an even greater failure than the peace talks of 2014.

US President Barack Obama has given Israel's leader Bibi Netanyahu an ultimatum - offer a concession to the Palestinian peace process or the US won't block new anti-Israeli resolutions at the UN General Assembly this fall. This was the gist of Obama's warning to the Israeli people when he was interviewed on Channel 2 TV.

Heart disease is a well-known killer. Just one decade ago, the WHO (World Health Organization) released its findings showing that heart disease has become a global epidemic with approximately 17 million people dying each year from heart attack and stroke; at the time of publishing, this made up nearly one-third of deaths globally; and the WHO then prospected that this number would only rise with time. Thankfully, medical research has produced some significant advances to combat this medical threat and continues to develop innovative methods to treat and prevent heart disease. Not surprisingly, a number of these advances (and ongoing research) are coming from none other than Israel. IsraCast went to Shaare Zedek Medical Hospital to learn more.

Who really bears responsibility for the killing of some 2,100 Palestinians, in the fighting between Hamas and Israel that ended on August 26 (1,100 Palestinian civilians and 1,000 terrorists)? Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has actually blamed Hamas for starting the war by escalating the rocketing of the Jewish state and then rejecting numerous Egyptian ceasefire proposals that Israel accepted. Interviewed on Palestinian TV, Abbas vented his anger: 'It was possible for us to avoid all that, the 2,000 martyrs, 10,000 injured and 50,000 houses that were damaged or destroyed (by Israeli counter strikes)'. Abbas, who recently signed a unity government agreement with Hamas, also criticized Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal for starting the war without consulting him. And Abbas added that if Hamas ever did it again, they would go it alone. The Palestinian President played an influential role in persuading Hamas to accept the ceasefire after Israel refused to give in to Hamas demands.

On Tuesday night, The Rolling Stones reminded us just how subversive rock and roll can be. Without making any public response to pressure from the likes of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and the BDS movement, who support an all out boycott of Israel, The Stones defiantly played their first show ever in Israel for over 40,000 gracious fans. Mick, Keith, Charlie and crew chose to perform for the people, rather than refusing to because of the decisions of the people’s government. In doing so they stuck it to the man and stood for the rock ethos that they helped create.